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Planned Parenthood’s Self-Destructive Behavior

PLANNED PARENTHOOD has a large target on its back. At no time in the organization’s history has it faced such a concerted Congressional challenge to its agenda. But most worrisome is the organization’s shrinking number of defenders, and Planned Parenthood has only itself to blame. It has adopted a strategy driven by blind partisanship, electing to burn bridges instead of building them. That strategy is damaging, and possibly imperiling, its mission.

Most of Planned Parenthood’s work focuses on health care for low-income women, things like screenings for breast cancer and diabetes, and family planning. Despite the claims of its opponents that it’s solely an abortion provider, abortions represent only 3 percent of its work. Almost half of the organization’s funding (46 percent) comes from the federal and state governments, making it imperative that it have friends in both parties. But that’s tough to do when Planned Parenthood sees ideological purity as so paramount that it permeates every aspect of its strategic planning. There is almost no room for even slight deviations. Those who are not in lock step with the organization are viewed as enemies to the cause.

This mind-set will doom Planned Parenthood to failure. When an organization is willing to support only lawmakers who are with it 100 percent of the time, it virtually guarantees that the debate will be bitterly partisan.

Gay rights supporters in New York offered an instructive lesson during last year’s battle for marriage equality. Gay marriage passed in New York because four Republican legislators crossed party lines. They did it in part because they had true bipartisan financial support. Chad Griffin, who heads the Human Rights Campaign and helped spearhead the effort, told me, “the experience in New York not only showed that we could reach across the aisle, but also that we could successfully make this a bipartisan issue.”

Planned Parenthood has taken the opposite approach. Take Senator Susan Collins of Maine as an example. She was one of five Republicans who fought off attempts last year to eliminate federal financing for the group. She is also one of the few Republicans who consistently break with the party and side with Planned Parenthood on abortion rights legislation. But it would be a mistake to believe her actions suggest a warm working relationship with the organization. She calls the group “infuriating” and now nothing more than “an arm of the Democratic National Committee.”

SENATOR COLLINS once had close ties to the group. Planned Parenthood endorsed her in 2002 because of her strong record of votes supporting abortion rights. Yet in her 2008 campaign, Planned Parenthood turned on her. The issue was her vote to confirm Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. While the vote was a challenging one for Senator Collins, she says she came to it after speaking with Mr. Alito about his respect for precedent and whether he considered Roe v. Wade settled law. (Senator Collins has since also voted to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.) Ms. Collins was acting in the traditional (and admirable) spirit of the Senate, which tends to confirm judicial nominees unless the person is clearly unqualified.

Yet because of her Alito vote, Planned Parenthood tried to defeat her. In 2008 it withdrew its support and endorsed and provided money for her opponent. This was shortsighted from a policy standpoint, since Ms. Collins agreed with the organization on almost all legislation. But it was also unwise from a political standpoint, since she was favored to win re-election, and did.

Today Ms. Collins says she is still disappointed in the organization and how it cut ties to her. “Why should I try to make their case in the Republican caucus? I can’t answer my colleagues when they say to me that Planned Parenthood is just a political party, because it is true,” she told me.

Planned Parenthood would barely acknowledge the break, answering my questions with a written statement from its policy director, Dawn Laguens, who said, “Though in recent years, we have disagreed on a few key pieces of legislation, we look forward to continuing to work with Senator Collins on issues that are mutually important to her and to Planned Parenthood.”

After losing such an important ally, you might think Planned Parenthood would have learned something. Instead it seems determined to repeat the mistake.

Representative Robert Dold of Illinois is a Republican abortion-rights advocate who is in a tough fight against a Democratic challenger. When funding for Planned Parenthood was under attack, Mr. Dold spoke out on the House floor, urging his colleagues to support the organization. He has even introduced legislation to try to stop the federal government from discriminating against groups like Planned Parenthood by ensuring their continuing access to Title X funds. He would love to have Planned Parenthood’s help with his re-election campaign, but so far the organization has opted to stayed out of the race. When I asked why, given his outspoken leadership on its behalf, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman told me that Mr. Dold does not have a 100 percent voting record on all legislation that Planned Parenthood deems important to women.

Once again, Planned Parenthood is potentially making an enemy of someone who has failed to pass its purity test. It’s gotten to the point where, in this election cycle, the group’s political arm (while proudly claiming to be nonpartisan) has not endorsed or directly given money to a single Republican. As a person who believes abortions should be safe, legal and rare, I support many of Planned Parenthood’s goals. But the militancy must go. Demanding a perfect record from candidates it supports has already left Planned Parenthood marginalized. So does an attitude that doesn’t ever seem to take into account that abortion is a morally complicated matter or that those on the anti-abortion side are often decent and well-intentioned people.

President Ronald Reagan, while hardly a favorite of the abortion rights movement, did offer a brilliant lesson when he said, “the person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.” Planned Parenthood needs allies, or it will continue to become rigid, calcified and increasingly ineffective.

Campbell Brown is a writer who was previously a television news reporter and anchor at CNN and NBC.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 24, 2012, on page SR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Planned Parenthood’s Self-Destructive Behavior. Today's Paper|Subscribe